Inheritance
by Crave Kashmir
Summary: Harry has never met a Muggle or even attended Hogwarts at the insistence of his grandfather, Lord Voldemort. As he nears his 17th birthday, he finally meets a man with answers to the questions he is forbidden to ask. It changes his whole world.


A/N: On this day one year ago, I wrote and started uploading my very first HP fanfiction to this site. It was absolute rubbish, and has been deleted. But that is so not the point. The point is that I have been writing HP fiction for one whole year now. I've published eight different stories, seven of which are complete, an unprecedented thing for me. So to celebrate, I have a new story. It's unlike anything I've written to date and I hope you will enjoy it.

Thanks for keeping me going!

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Inheritance  
Chapter 1: Life as He Knows It

The boy shot up in bed, shocked awake by the piercing scream of a woman being killed. His head and heart ached from the echo of the woman's voice. Desperately, he scrambled in the blackness for his wand, finding it under his pillow. His fingers curled around it, clutching it tightly, feeling the magic encased inside the holly wood and taking comfort in knowing just how powerful he and it were.

Harry fell back onto his bed, the terror still gripping his chest urgently. Why did that scream affect him so? He had heard plenty of screaming in his life. If he took down the charms around his room and listened hard, he could probably make out some screaming now. He hated that a scream from some unknown woman could shake him into such fear. It had taken him years to identify this feeling, the sweat that escaped him even as he shivered, the heart beating as if he were running, the sickening turn of his stomach – he often did vomit as he woke to the scream – and the acute pain in his chest. As a much younger boy, he had thought it was a heart attack, but when he didn't die from it he knew it was something different.

The damp sheets were uncomfortable beneath him, so he rose. It was near enough to the rising hour anyway, what did a measly 62 extra minutes of sleep matter? He didn't bother to charm his sheets dry or make his bed. That's what the house-elves were for.

"Breakfast had better be ready," he muttered darkly.

The indefinable helplessness he felt when the scream came to him always left him in a foul mood. Weak was the one thing he could never be. He was allowed his curiosity to an extent and humour, his strange sense of right and wrong, but never weakness.

The first time he cried, his grandfather had him beaten.

"This will give you something to cry about," the old man had said coldly. He often spoke coldly, but rarely toward Harry or any of his close friends.

"Friends…" Harry said the word slowly. It was wrong. His grandfather had no real friends, not as Harry understood the word. He had advisors that he ignored. He had Yes Men – his grandfather always enjoyed causing them a worried sweat, making them wonder about what answer he really wanted to hear. But mostly Grandfather had minions. That was the word for them; dispensable bodies to be sent on assignments or into battle.

He knew it was a strange life, that very few people had a life like his, a family like his. It was all he had ever known, however, so it was what he accepted… except on these early mornings when the woman woke him with her desperate pleas.

On these mornings, Harry felt somehow that the world was wrong.

On these mornings, he felt that he was meant to be somewhere else, _someone_ else.

'But who else could I be?' he questioned, not without serious consideration.

The kitchen was cramped, warm and welcoming, but Harry never went there to eat. That was the staff room, where the food was prepared efficiently. Their meals appeared in the dining room, a formal room made oppressive and inhospitable by the weight of its own grandeur. His Grandfather used the dark and polished room to intimidate his potential followers with manners and opulence instead of brute power. Every meal was eaten in that room, so it no longer affected Harry as it did the newcomers.

He slouched in his chair, the one immediately to the right of the table's head, where Grandfather always sat. His breakfast appeared without prompting, a simple bowl of porridge accompanied by juice and tea. This was his breakfast every morning, nourishment without extravagance. He wasn't being deprived; his grandfather simply was not seduced by earthly pleasures of any sort, and everyone else was treated as the master of the house was treated. Opulence for the sake of persuasion aside, the man was one for austerity. Harry didn't mind, but it did get old after so many years. Some pancakes would be nice, or bacon. He had been treated to gorgeous full English breakfasts every time he stayed over at his friends' houses, a treat he relished.

He needed to arrange a night at a friend's house soon.

"Friends…" he said again.

Like before, that wasn't the right word for them. Every one of the boys or girls he knew were the children of his grandfather's supporters. Harry wondered, and not for the first time, what it would be like to have real friends that wanted to hang out with him. Instead, all he had was young Yes Men and fodder-in-the-making laughing at his jokes and simpering at his side.

He hated it.

"You are troubled," the rich voice caressed his ear from the doorway.

Harry sat up straighter out of respect. "Grandfather," he greeted the man as he entered the room and sat in the high-backed chair.

"What has you awake so early?" Grandfather asked. He didn't need to ask; among his many skills was the power of legilemency. He could have pulled Harry's thoughts from his mind as easily as he asked the question. Harry took it as a small nod of esteem that his Grandfather allowed him to voice his concerns.

That said, he wouldn't dare tell the man the truth.

"You said that you were going to have Lucius raid Hogwarts today," Harry said. It was the biggest attempt his Grandfather had made on the school to date, and Harry was anxious to see the place that held such meaning to his only living family. "I thought I might accompany him if you would allow it."

He held little hope of going to the school. At sixteen, he was not yet old enough to do what he liked without his guardian's permission. He ought to have been in attendance at the famous wizarding school for the past six years, but his Grandfather had refused to send him. Harry always thought it odd given the man's love for the school.

He had attended Hogwarts in his youth, like nearly every wizard in the United Kingdom. According to his own stories, that was where he truly came to understand his own potential and heritage, where he became the man he was today. Growing up hearing about the fantastic old castle and the meaning it held to his mentor, Harry had waited all summer for the owl that would carry his letter. Sure enough, it arrived shortly before his eleventh birthday. As with all the house's post, it was given first to Grandfather. The man had read the address, but, rather than give Harry his letter, he burned it and sent back a reply that Harry would not be attending.

Harry never asked why, though he was desperate to know.

He never dared question his guardian's decisions. Only if prompted, would he offer up his curiosity in the man's presence.

"Still so eager," Grandfather commented with a smile. "One day, you will see Hogwarts, my boy, but not until I have made it clean enough for you."

"There are too many undesirables there?" Harry ventured.

"Try as my Ministry might, Dumbledore will not change his mind."

Dumbledore. Harry knew that name as well as he knew his own. He had heard it cursed often enough. For all the damage the ancient wizard had done to Grandfather's plans, there was always an undercurrent of respect to his voice when he spoke of Albus Dumbledore. Harry very much wanted to meet him, Dumbledore, Grandfather's greatest opponent.

"Severus will be here for your Potions lesson soon," Grandfather said, drawing Harry from his thoughts. "Get ready. You will not keep him waiting."

"Yes, sir," Harry nodded and stood.

"And Harry," the smooth voice called to him, touching the boy's cheek gently in a way his hand never did. "Do not ask again." Soft as the voice was, Harry understood the threat beneath it.

"No, Grandfather," Harry promised and left the dining room.

oOo

Harry was ready and waiting for Severus Snape's arrival. His cauldron was set on the burner, ingredients neatly arranged and labelled, silver knife lethally sharp. He was eagerly reading his potions book, the same text read by all the man's students, both his one private pupil and all those at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Snape's lessons were the ones the boy looked forward to the most.

He hated the subject. He lacked the patience necessary to measure the porcupine quills to precisely 5/32nd of an inch or stir a boiling cauldron eighty-four anticlockwise stirs, each lasting exactly one second.

And the professor himself was no picnic either.

Considering how important Harry was to Snape's master, he had anticipated being treated with a bit of respect. He didn't ask that the man kiss his hand or provide him with perfect grades with no effort given, but some civility would have been nice. Instead, Snape sneered at him more than anyone had ever dared, not that many would have dared at all. There always seemed to be something on the tip of Snape's tongue that he was fighting to keep from saying. Harry expected it was something extremely cutting. Draco had told him how harsh Snape could be to his students, even the Slytherins.

No, Harry could have done without the man and his subject. The part of these lessons he really looked forward to was hearing Snape complain.

He was always complaining.

Since he couldn't criticize Harry directly for fear of someone overhearing and telling Grandfather, he criticized Harry indirectly. Likening him to the most untalented students of his classes, comparing his preparations, stirring and even the way he breathed too loudly to whichever Hogwarts students was most annoying him that week. Harry loved it. Hearing the names and gripes from an official staff member of the school made him feel as if he was studying there, too. Harry knew the names of nearly all Snape's students, knew he hated the bumbling Neville Longbottom more than anyone else he had ever taught, knew that Hermione Granger was the brightest witch in the school and it annoyed the hell out of the man.

Harry was fighting the grin over Snape's last rant about Ronald Weasley nearly killing half the class by mistaking powdered asphodel for powdered acidophilus when the man slammed the door shut and stalked into the room.

"Wipe that smile off your face," Snape ordered.

Harry obeyed immediately. Snape was the only one allowed to order Harry around. He had a special place in the ranks, never the Yes Man and too valuable to be a peon. The boy never knew what made him so special, but he suspected it was his position at Hogwarts and working with Dumbledore.

"Good morning, Professor," Harry said.

"None of your cheek," the man practically spat and Harry had to wonder what got his knickers in a twist. "Turn to page 235 and read about Amortentia. I expect you to be able to explain the key ingredients that make it effective. If you cannot, I will have an eighteen-inch essay on the potion before the morning is out."

"Almonds and Valerian root, Professor," Harry said without pause.

The man's lips grew to impossible levels of thinness as his scowl deepened. "You haven't even turned to the proper page," Snape ground out.

"I read it yesterday, sir," he smiled. It always annoyed Snape when he smiled; something flashed across the man's face, recognition and anger that had little to do with Harry.

"Why almonds?" Snape demanded.

"Amortentia works on the drinker's sense of smell in connection with the memory, which Ancient Greek wizards learned is connected to the amygdala," Harry rattled off the information. "The name amygdala comes from the Greek word for almond, because of the similarity in appearance. That connection is used to guide the potion to that part of the drinker's brain."

Snape sneered. "Know-it-all answer," he glared. "Direct from the book. As bad as that irritating little swot Granger. Are you incapable of forming an original thought?"

"Of course I am, sir," Harry defended himself without thinking.

"Can't even keep your mouth shut," the man spun around, his robes billowing out in a breeze of his own making as he stalked up to the blackboard to begin the instructions, muttering the entire way. "Ought to be grateful you aren't in the same class as those other dunderheads. The level of stupidity would be too much."

"Bad day yesterday, Professor?" Harry ventured.

"That is of no concern of yours, P—" Snape shouted, snapping his mouth shut before he could call Harry a foul name. He always came close to calling the boy something that started with a P. Harry tried several times to irritate him into irrationality so that the name would slip, but he had yet to succeed.

"But it is, Professor," the boy insisted, forcing his eyes wide in a mockery of innocence. "You always take your bad mood out on me. It's not my fault if your students are such rubbish. It's not my fault if they play tricks on you." He could see the vein pulsing in Snape's forehead, the muscles flexing in his jaw. Fighting the smirk, he needled the man a bit more, "Honestly, Professor, I'm just doing the best I can. It's not my fault if they call you names behind your back. I—"

"Enough!" the man shouted, slamming his hand down hard on the table top. "Keep your assertions to yourself, Potter. I see clear through your little charade of virtue."

Harry dropped the façade, honest confusion taking over his face. "Potter?"

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A/N: Did I say thanks for keeping me going? Because you totally deserve some major kudos for reading my stuff.

And a MASSIVE thank you for _Lalinn_, my brilliant and overworked beta. Merci beaucoup!


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